What’s your hustle?
What does hustle mean to you? How would you define it?
It’s a subjective word, and the meaning can change from person to person, and here’s my attempt at describing it:
Hustle is going after bets, ones with low probability of success, with high confidence, and doing it often.
Let’s start unpacking this -
By bets, I don’t mean gamble. I enjoy recreational poker, however wouldn’t want to hustle on the poker table — that’s called bluffing and that’s a different art form. By bets, I think of things that matter to me, outcomes that I care about. Having said that, it can just as well be applied to every day trivial tasks.
The task must have a low probability of success, otherwise there’s no ‘hustle’ element to it. To look at it conversely, if the task had a high probability of success, everyone would be doing it and there’s no need for the true ‘hustler’ skillset.
High confidence is a precursor to having an abnormal success rate, which further feeds into the confidence and fuels the virtuous cycle. If you went into the task with low confidence, you’re lowering your chances of success, and hence making it harder for yourself to follow the next task with the same zeal.
Doing it often is essential to have multiple wins / success under your belt. There are 2 examples that come to mind:
- During my time in LA, there would be plenty of secret concerts held in tiny venues (200–250 people) that would sell out in minutes. And 9 out of 10 times I wouldn’t have tickets for them. I ended up getting into 60–70% of them, simply by showing up, talking to fans hanging around & being nice to the door crew. At a Foo Fighters gig in North Hollywood, the band manager let me + 4 other fans in, a couple of songs into the band’s set as we hadn’t left even after the band started playing while everyone else dispersed. And you know what? Krist Novoselic showed up on stage at that gig and played Marigold with The Foos!
- Cold emails. I’ve gotten pretty damn good at this, & have got Paul Graham, Garrett Camp (before I joined Uber), Naveen Selvadurai and many others to respond to a cold email. Heck, I even got my job at Glovo with a cold email.
What’s common with the above 2 examples — failures that I haven’t highlighted. I didn’t make it in for every single gig, and at times had to come back home disheartened after waiting for 4–5 hrs, and similarly with emails, my success rate is probably 25–30% — that means I’m not hearing back from the majority.
Moving on, hustle also entails hard work. You’re putting in lot more hours than your peers towards tasks that might lead to nothing. Most people don’t like this risk reward paradigm.
Can hustle be taught and learnt like any other skillset? Yes.
A few years back I was of the notion that it was inherent, and not something that can be taught. As I’ve gotten better over the years to unpack what hustle means, I’m able to transmit those qualities on to people that want to learn. Truth is most people are risk averse — they listen to the advise however don’t end up taking action and implementing. They are scared of change. You know what — I’m terrified as well; just that I’ve wired my brain to overcome it.
This is what hustle means to me, strictly as of today. Not sure if I could have defined it a few years back, and if the meaning would stay the same in a couple of years from now.
What’s your hustle? How would you describe it?
